Lawton writes: “The concept of persona was probably salutary when it first appeared in Chaucer criticism, for it helped correct an unliterary emphasis on ‘what Chaucer thought.’” The unliterary emphasis to which he refers appears in Donaldson’s essay: “Of course, all tritely approbative expressions enter easily into ironic connotation, but the phrase means a good companion, which is just what Chaucer means” (932). Donaldson thus claims to know Chaucer’s original intention. In other words, he presents as an absolute fact a notion of which he cannot be certain. This method of writing, of jumping to conclusions that cannot be established by textual evidence, appears several times in the essay. For instance, Donaldson writes: “[…] it must lead to a loss of critical perception, and in particular to a confused notion of Chaucerian irony, to see in the Prologue a reporter who is acutely aware of the significance of what he sees but who sometimes, for ironic emphasis, interprets the evidence presented by his observation in a fashion directly contrary to what we expect” (929). The narrator, he claims, is acutely unaware of the significance of what he sees. My issue with Donaldson’s argument here is that he has no substantial evidence of the narrator’s naïve nature. How does he know that the narrator is not aware of and deliberately hinting at the irony present in the portraits?